According to the National Retail Federation spending for Christmas in 2025 is expected to pass $1 Trillion dollars for the first time.
The current administration would like us to believe that since spending is up it must mean that everyone is doing okay.
Well, as a poor white trash mother in the middle of nowhere Kentucky I’m here to tell you that’s bullshit.
The reality is that we all just spent a hell of a lot more than we ever have on less than half as much stuff.
I have always struggled with the modern Capitalist Christmas. The amassing of gifts whether full price or from constant online sales, Black Friday “deals”, or coupon collections. I’m of the opinion we humans waste a lot of time and money on things that just end up in landfills a month later. I’ve seen the pictures of places like Lagos in Nigeria where so much of our American trash is sent. Places where the trash is 13 stories tall.
I’ve always tried to give my children enough so that they can have the same warm holiday memories that I know I cherish, but I don’t follow the idea that more things is the only way to have a better holiday.
For myself, as I’m sure many others, there is also the guilt that comes from giving our hard earned money to corporations, who exploit their workers (our neighbors), as well as the planet. These exploits have given them the advantage of our dollar: They’ve monopolized the system so that it is nearly impossible for a middle class person to be able to afford to shop anywhere outside of our corporate overlords Amazon and Walmart.
These two giants have really taken the old coal company town method and applied it nationwide.
But it’s really hard to sit down with a four year old and explain this. Santa can’t give him the toys he’s asked for because the only place that you can get those toys is a corporation that’s on the naughty list?
Then I’d have to contend with the fact that somehow his friends at school, many whose parents had to take out a cash advance loan or more credit card debt, did get that toy from Santa. I hate to say it but the old man isn’t really holding up well with the modern world.
I know there’s the option to ditch Santa. But I don’t want to do that. Maybe it’s silly, but in a world where kids rehearse lock down drills more often than fire drills, (because a shooting in an American school is more likely than a fire) I want my kid to be a kid. I feel as though joy in this country is fading faster than our constitutional rights, and I want my kids to have as much fun as they can while they can.
I also don’t want my kid to miss the few short years of magic that Christmas could be. Christmas the way I remember it.
Meanwhile , across the platforms of the internet, political pundits, influencers, and podcasters keep ranting at us to make sure that we make our voices heard through our dollars- but most of these people can afford to buy locally handcrafted toys at $100 bucks each. Also I’ve seen their pictures so I know they’re still buying the stuff they tell us not to.
The average middle class members of the struggle bus are, in the meantime, trying to work out how we just spent $100 on candy and tiny stocking stuffers. I’ve never seen so many buggies pulled to the side of the aisles while parents nervously calculate prices. I bet the makers of calculator apps are really having a moment.
Over the past few holidays I’ve noticed a major swing in the direction of nostalgia. Holiday decorating trends favoring the styles of our grandparents and a yearning for the christmases of our youths.
Christmas’ spent in crowded houses with tables popped out in every room, kids playing in hallways, and everyone fighting over one bathroom. A fresh cut cedar tree covered in cheap tinsel, multicolored lights, and old ornaments. Secret Santa’s that always got messed up somehow with someone forgetting whose name they drew. An orange in your stocking.
Christmas isn’t like that anymore.
From my own experience I can’t help but note the lack of family. Most of the older members of my family are dead. What remains of us are plagued with a plethora of addiction issues, relationship struggles, and a neverending story of financial misfortune.
This was all before Trump came along and the line was drawn in the sand by the MAGA members of our family to part ways with those of us could spell e-q-u-a-l -r-i-g-h-t-s.
To top it off like the star on this tree of sadness what was once $150 worth of groceries is now $315 and the kids will be home for at least two weeks for winter break. **Just for an example, here in “affordable living country” (where people from bigger cities have flocked because according to them it’s more affordable) a box of breakfast sandwiches (yes the preservative laden poison ones) that was $8 ten months ago is now $12. For those of you saying make it from scratch, ignoring the fact that most of us are running on empty trying to scrounge up pennies to just fucking exist and thus have no time– flour is at least $1.50 more than last year and a container of strawberries is $9.75 (*based on receipts from my own local store).
Canned foods are up. Bread is up. Meat?
If you aren’t aware of how extravagant meat has become then you must be a fucking millionaire who pays someone to do your grocery shopping.
We’re all nostalgic for a time that many of us still remember but most can’t understand why it’s gone. A time of affordability (the “hoax”) and upward mobility. When our lives weren’t so damn stress full. When we weren’t cursed with the knowledge that we weren’t going anywhere and things would get worse and not better.
The most certain fact I know: Poverty will kill you. I’ve buried people I’ve loved to prove it. Lack of medical care. Lack of mental health care. The kind of stress that breaks the body down fast. Heart disease brought on by years of never being able to just break fucking even.
So the idea of barely getting by is nothing new for me.
I’m always reminded of the last Christmas gift I received from my grandmother. She struggled financially her entire life, always apologizing for not being able to do more for us. She died in her sleep a few weeks before Christmas but had tucked away gifts for her six grandchildren. When we all sat in her emptied home to open our individualized cards, I’ll never forget our quiet shock. She’d given us each $20. We all knew how much she would’ve had to save to do it. How hard she would’ve had to work to give six kids $20 each while still keeping her bills paid.
We appreciated that money more than any we would ever receive.
This year holiday spending may be the highest it’s ever been but it’s not because the working class is doing well, it’s because we’re spending money we don’t have just to get by. Just to make things seem okay for our kids by putting a few outrageously overpriced gifts under our tree from a man none of us understand anymore.
So Happy Holidays to all but most of all to those of us who have only inherited generational poverty. If we have anything it is resilience.
A Hermitess 